So, you got your fiance(e) to whom you’ll get married soon or later, but are far apart or do not meet regularly. Don’t waste money and your ears on Cell Phone calls! Instead use Instant Messenger.
Anyone would recommend to use Yahoo! But in this case, as well when you are good friends, siblings, ancestors/decedents, colleagues or any relationship which is definite - I would recommend MSN Messenger!
Might be only my view, but MSN Messenger is excellent Instant Messenger for clean and clear chatting with no creepy fonts and styles, non-sense IMVironments, ludicrous icons and other crappy objects on screen! You are not adding, accepting/denying friends on daily basis - if so, use Yahoo! Messenger.
I’ve experienced long and really good chats with friends on MSN without any problems. I feel gracious chatting on MSN for long time, with crystal clear sound and good quality display resolution of webcam display - Yahoo! is sick in these cases!
Other than elegant chatting experience, I would list out some good attributes:
1 }} Single mode Alert Window that comes on bottom-right, whenever you receive new mail, new contact online, receive some chat-message/nudge/invitation from online member (with chat window NOT opened). This looks really nice. If there are more than one activities (same or different type of), MSN arranges more windows on top of current Alert Window.
2 }} The complete design of this Messenger is simply astounding - very clear and refined. The menus and toolbars are so designed for long time professional / personal chatting. Even with different versions, menus and toolbar items are arranged consistency. (Yahoo! lovers: there are many features which are not consistent in YM! )
3 }} File Sharing, Remote Assistance, Application Sharing, Whiteboard are the features which are very useful at times and available only in MSN Messenger, as per my knowledge.
4 }} You can login with either Hotmail or MSN account. Unlike Yahoo! Messenger, this won’t allow you to chat with non-online user or user which is not in your list (If you need to initiate the chat, otherwise you can chat if ’’ADD REQUEST’’ was send by him/her and you agree but not added; and he/she has initiated chat for now).
5 }} NO OFFLINE MESSANGING: This would be considered as major drawback from Yahoo! lovers. But, see from clear - consistent - elegant chatting point of view -- it is made like this!
6 }} Though YM has IMvironments, MSN too has Background sharing and Dynamic Background sharing. Again, this add your experience to elegance messaging. No disgusting unknown backgrounds, no ads, no buzz sound change - everything is neat. Also you can apply other background image or download dynamic BG.
7 }} Native Emoticons are neat and clean but does not expresses mood perfectly ( have you seen ’smile’ or ’cry’ icon? ). Here you can also define your own emoticons as well as their shortcuts - thousands of good icons are available to download.
8 }} Unread Email count is ALWAYS PERFECT! No matter how many Hotmail pages you open to read your Hotmail/MSN emails and read them in random order - MSN displays them accurately. (Please not that this does not apply while using MS Outlook or Outlook Express - since these email client applications send request/response to email servers on timely basis and not instantly when you ’read’ emails.)
9 }} MSN Messenger displays the photos of your contacts when they are online or logged in (in Alert Window). It is not available in Yahoo!
10 }} Handwriting canvas allows you to express yourself more optimistically! Provided you are your online contact have compatible MSN Messenger to send/receive handwritten message.
11 }} Latest MSN Messenger (7.5) allows you to record and send small voice clip of yourself. This is useful when you cannot initiate voice conversation. You can (either of members) also save that recorded clip you’ve just send/received!!
12 }} Featured Packs, Winks, Nudge, Inline Search, Emailing, Blocking et. al. are features I need not mention....